" You should not. So when you say you opposed drilling, what form did your opposition take? You sold your car, bought a pushbike, wrote letters to your representatives at local , state and federal level, then what? Or would my guess be right that what you actually did was grumble a bit to anyone who would listen. (Just like what the rest of us do).
Well, I worked very hard to elect a gentleman running against the "Drill Baby, Drill" folks. It turns out he was more worried about "bipartisanship" and "compromise" than living up to those environmental commitments.
But yes, in a democracy the way to change policy is to talk and participate in the electoral process. What else would you expect? Die on a cross for your cause?
I have no reliable data on the actual efficacy of remote devices. My suspicion is it would have made no difference and is intrinsically useless. Either the BOP was not closed because the men on the drillfloor died before they could try to close it, or because they did try and something inside - possibly the same condensates that blocked the bell coffer dam-probably mixed with boulders of cement- prevented it from closing. I think this was a failure of procedures. Human error. But we don't know yet. Certainly such a backup might become a requirement of the new rules we expect will come out of this, but whether it would have made any difference is doubtful. What I did not like was Hayward's aexpressed dependence on Transocean's BOP. The BOP is not your primary defence. It's your last line of defence. The well was drilled already. They knew the downhole pressures. They should never have needed to rely on the BOP at all.
I understand it was a terrible, unanticipated accident. Of course it "shouldn't" have happened. Chrenobyl shouldn't have happend, Valdez shouldn't have happened, the mining disasters shouldn't have happened.
That's just not the point. BP or Horizon could have prevented this disaster with a $500,000 device (I have seen no authority say otherwise--the WSJ and other publications have asserted that the switch lower down in the pipeline would be sufficient), but they spent millions of dollars lobbying Washington to eliminate that regulation.
You've lost me here. The only oil company personnel I ever meet are engineers. I never heard one in thirty years say anything of the sort.
Wrong. It's you and me and anbother 600 million people in Europe and North America and a lot more around the planet who are either like us, or want to be, in our casual acceptance of our right to burn more energy, personally and individually, than all our ancestors back to the Miocene.
I'm not making claims about employees of oil companies, I'm making claims about their behavior as corporations.
I don't want to waste my afternoon (and yours) tracing through the endless ties between deregulation promoting, anti-science groups and oil companies. Thus, I will just offer one clear example:
Freedomworks, the organization responsible for setting up all these teabagger rallies, is run by a guy named Dick Armey. Right wing leaders like Steve Forbes are on the board. They are financed by the usual right wing suspects including getting a significant portion of their funds from Exxon Mobile.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/the-corporate-lobbyists-b_b_186367.html
Thus, oil company gives money to right wing activists who try to organize the base to oppose any politicians that try to pass climate legislation, regulate corporations, or strengthen environmental regulation.
This happens perpetually. Both of the recent mine disasters occured at locations with hundreds of safety violations. The owner of the West Virginia mine lobbied was a teabagger who consistently lobbied the government to eliminate safety regulations.
Let's not blame the legislators or the oil companies. Let's place the blame squarely where it belongs. On us.
ETA- None of the above is a personal attack on you, TraneWreck. You just happen to be the one asking the questions.
No worries, the same goes in the other direction. I'm not going after you personally or really anyone you've worked with, and I appreciate the knowledge you've brought to this discussion.
But there is a huge political component to this disaster that made it very predictible in a statistical sense (if this hadn't happened, something would). We are very deeply suffering in this country from a series of disasters, starting with the economic collapse, that could have been avoided if our nation had a strong commitment to regulating industry.
